When and How to do Meditation

When and How to do Meditation 

I have found the below method very useful for doing meditation.  This method consists of various techniques put together for useful meditation. The method covers mostly the techniques taught by my Guruji, but includes some additional points.

Most of the points mentioned below are not followed by us due to odd working hours, life style or eating habits. The points on food are only optional for beginners, as love towards the divine is more important, however they do help us proceed faster. Also once a person starts progressing in meditation he will automatically follow below steps.

Let us start with the timing for meditation and the diet that one needs to maintain for effective meditation.

Aspect 1 – Food and timing

• Meditation in the early morning is useful or in the night, as the disturbance is lower at these times
• Meditation on empty stomach is useful than with full stomach, we can actually see the difference in the concentration when our stomach is full. If we want to meditate after eating food then it is advisable to eat half stomach or eat for sustenance rather than full stomach. This will help the mind while doing meditation
• Do meditation after 90 mins of eating as the energy used for digesting food will be more at the first 90 – 120 mins. The problem with meditation with full stomach would be that the mind is not focused as breathing is more at this time and it is not stabilized as the energy is used for digestion
• Limited intake of food is advisable as it gets easily digested and breathing stabilizes quickly
• Quality of food is important as food that cause drowsiness or hyperactivity will not help in good meditation session
• Heavy fat foods, chips, paneer etc cause drowsiness and food which are spicy cause hyperactivity of the mind hence to be avoided.
• Mild foods, fruits are advisable for better meditation as it keeps the mind and body light.
• Sitting in a place where one is not disturbed is important as when a person is in deep meditation and if someone touches him/her it would be dangerous (panic attack may happen)
• Healthy body helps, as mind can concentrate freely and does not bother about pains and problems

Aspect 2 – Pranayama

• Breathing exercise plays important role in improving meditation quality drastically. If a person is able to hold breath for 60 sec per breath easily then the progress is very fast
• Pranayama controls the flow if Prana (vital breathe), erratic movement of breath is the cause for unsettled mind, more the breathing more the thoughts.
• Hence it is important that one does pranayama to stabilize his or her breath which will eradicate unnecessary thoughts
• So you can follow Win hof method (google it) of breathing exercise, this is very useful in improving breathe holding capacity and quieting the mind, this also improve immunity
• Alternatively do Nadi Sodhana pranayama along with the breathing exercise mentioned in the next point.
• Second is to follow abdominal breathing where we breathe from both the nostrils for 4-5 counts for inhalation and 10-15 counts on retention and again 4-5 count on exhalation and again 4-5 hold holding, then repeat the process. One thing is that while inhaling our stomach should expand (come out) and exhaling stomach should contract (come in).

Aspect 3 – Mantra Chanting and Meditation

• Once the preliminaries are done, start chanting mantra that one is initiated with (if not initiated meditate on OM).

• Concentrate the mantra first on the forehead (ajna chakra point on forehead (between eyebrows)), meditate the mantra on the forehead point for couple of minutes, you will feel slight sensation, Now what has to be done is that start the meditation of the mantra from your forehead ajna point (between eyebrows) and slowly shift the focus from forehead to inside the head where the actual ajna chakra is located (if one draws a perpendicular line from Sahasrara and Ajna point on the forehead, the meeting place of these two points is Ajna chakra.
• This takes around 15-30 days to master, so we have to shift our focus from forehead to inside the head, after few days we can sense pressure or tingling sensation at a particular point inside the head at the Ajna chakra position. Hold on to that point and meditate on the mantra at this point
• When this practice becomes stable, our thoughts gets reduced drastically and mind starts becoming calm, at this state we will not feel like chanting the mantra, at this stage stop mantra chanting and start meditating at that point or stay at that state where your awareness is at ajna chakra.
• Slowly you will lose consciousness and come back to consciousness, this will happen for a fraction a second, and this will start improving to 2-3 mins and once we become proficient we will be in this state for 45 to 60 mins. It is at this state that realization happens within Samadhi.